Camping Trip

You pack up a whole load of camping supplies in the trunk of your car then you simply float off to a fantastical camping site, singing show tunes all the way. You unload your car in a minute or two, then you pitch you up your tents. Then your family goes off and splashes in the perfect temperature lake, you all play games and have a lovely time and everyone appears to be getting along. You go on a quick energy filling hike, then go back to camp to cook your dinner. You peel and wrap some potatoes in tinfoil, then leave them for an hour to cook, while you and your family sing camp songs together, and collect pine cones for a later activity. You eat your delectable dinner, and then rinse your dishes with water that just magically appeared from somewhere. Then you grab some sticks and gather round the campfire to cook s'mores. Once everyone is done eating you kick some dirt on the fire and head to bed. You snuggle into the tent, and you’re surrounded by the heat that gathers in your sleeping bag. You drift off to slumber with crickets sounding in the background. You wake up to the glorious smell of fluffy eggs and fresh crisp bacon. You quickly put on the perfect hiking outfit and and eat a gourmet charcoal roasted breakfast while the birds are chirping a luxurious melody. You go for an hour or two long family hike, across some various trail. Return to camp, only to repeat the lovely process twice more.

Camping Trip reality:

You try to stuff as many pots and pans, tents, backpacks, and sleeping bags into the trunk as you can, but the door keeps popping open so you take out a few bags, which later you will find hold the toilet paper, bug spray, and sunscreen. After an exhausting two hour ride of screaming, kicking, and hair pulling, you reach the dreaded campgrounds. It takes you an hour to unload everything from the car, and find a spot to temporarily shove all the retail camping junk that you always bring, but never end up using. You try to to put up your tents but the wind keeps blowing them halfway across the whole campsite. Once you finally recapture them, you just tie them to a tree branch and nail the corners in the ground. Your mom makes you go sit in the bitter cold water until she finds the bag full of inedible canned food, she bought with such enthusiasm. Your little siblings start to chuck frozen mud at your face, and you almost bite their heads off in frustration. Your mom finally finds the “food” but she says before dinner you have to go on power hike. You walk about five steps down a trail, then you fall to the ground from exhaustion, with the sun, shining as bright as parents fake love for camping, in your eyes the whole time. When you get back you’re handed a huge sack of potatoes which you have to peel one by one with a dull knife. A millennium later, you're done and you have to lay them on the charcoal, but you burn yourself every time you get within 2 feet of the flames. Your family scatters off into various tents, and try to get internet on your iPad, but there doesn't appear to even be a slim chance of connecting to anything that might take your mind off this unbearably awful experience. An hour and a half later you start to smell something burnt coming from the direction of the fire pit. You jump to your feet but bump your head on the top of the tent then fall to the ground and bruise both knees on the fallen pines underneath the cloth floor. When you eventually get the potatoes out of the flames, everyone in your family is giving you the evil eye, and they leave you the most delightfully screwed tinfoil wrapped, hump of black. After “dinner” you have to take the fire scorched pot down to the lake and scrub all the grit off with a stone you find on the riverside. You have to go searching for s’more sticks, but you can only find some grime coated twigs, about 9 inches long. You bring them back to camp, and when you shove the gooey marshmallows on the sticks they gain a black hole where the little twig had protruded the bundle of artificial white fluff. Your little siblings keep dropping their twigs in the flames, since they are too tiny to roast on, hence you have to fry them all a chocolaty mess of a s’more. After everyone is done and headed off to bed, you kick some dirt on the flames, then they burst up and singe your arm hair. After a while of trying, you have to go get your dad and you both pile truckloads of water and dirt on it, until it finally dies out. You try to creep silently into your tent, but the zipper gets stuck on your hair, and all your sisters have to help you get it out. When you finally untangle yourself, you have to go through all the backpacks trying to find your sleeping bag. Once you have it you realize it’s not zipped up, so again you go with the zipper wars! You wrap yourself in a blanket then try to squeeze in your sleeping bag, but when you're pushing yourself in the blanket gets squished down to the bottom of the bag. You decide that you’re just going to leave it, because it’s much more trouble than it’s worth. You try to fall asleep but your nose is cold as an ice cube, and you're pretty sure your toes have frozen off. Besides that the crickets and owls have decided their life mission is to keep you awake. You get about four hours of sleep between the weather, snoring, animal sound, and fear of being eaten by a wild bear. At what feels like the crack of dawn, your dad comes and unzips your tent announcing that your breakfast is ready. After the dinner crisis the night before you’re as hungry as a Horse. You dazedly get up, put on some clothes, brush your hair, apply your cover up, then spend ten minutes searching for your favorite pair of socks before you drift out of the tent. When you get there you discover that your brothers have eaten all the Bacon and eggs, and your sisters inhaled the strawberries in ten seconds. All that is left for you is a hard piece of toast, and you aren't very happy about it. Finally when it seems the horror of camping is almost through, you realize you have two more days to go.

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